This Is A Book

One of the most hysterical books I have ever read (if not the most hysterical). I laughed out loud more times than I can count.

I had honestly never heard of Demetri Martin until I saw this book sitting in a pile on Marty’s desk (one of his students had chosen to annotate for their summer reading project). I decided to pick it up for the mere fact that I’m interested in reading what teenagers find appealing.

As a future high school English teacher, I’ve been reading books that teenagers can relate to and are interested in. I’m a huge fan of classic novels (such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Outsiders, Lord of the Flies and Of Mice and Men) but with every passing years, I’d say the majority of students find those stories less and less relevant. Sad truth.

Anyways – back to Demetri Martin. This book was amazing; it’s a hodgepodge of his comedy, including illustrations and entertaining short stories. Some of my favorites include: Megaphone (quite possibly my favorite), Genie (my second favorite), Hotline and Cat Calender.

A couple of quotes that made me laugh: (from Some Statistics)

– “Nearly 1/2 of all people in the United States are torsos.”
– “If you stretch the average person’s intestines out from end to end, it would make him scream a lot.”

With all of that praise for This Is A Book, I will give one critique. As I was ‘gut’ laughing early on, I felt that after reaching a certain point (about 3/4 way through), Martin lost his steam. While the last 1/4 stories were comical, they weren’t as comical as the beginning. Nevertheless, I can’t say enough about this wonderfully clever book.